Anyway, while walking in the streets of Kensington & Chelsea a couple of days ago, we spotted the presence of a motorcycle parking bay for residents use only in Penywern Road, London SW5, at the corner with Warwick Road, which had no security devices, although the council’s website specifically states that “all permit-only designated motorcycle bays are now provided with locking ground anchors”. Well, that’s obviously not true, is it? The council charges residents a minimum of £35 to use these bays, which are all supposed to be equipped with locking ground anchors.

Where are the locking ground anchors?

Where are the locking ground anchors?

Perhaps the RBKC thinks that motorcyclists are a bunch of idiots who can be bullied and treated like cash cows? If the RBKC continues with their racket, we won’t be at all surprised if sooner rather than later, the No To Bike Parking Tax campaign comes their way and causes mayhem in Kensington & Chelsea, as it is the case every Wednesday morning in Westminster.

Be careful Kensington & Chelsea, the bikers are keeping a very close eye on you!

Please join and support the campaign to stop Westminster Council from stealth taxing motorcyclists to park before their scheme spreads all over the UK and the rest of Europe. For further details, visit http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

Rejoignez le groupe de manifestants contre le stationnement payant des motocyclistes a Westminster avant que cela ne se propage dans le reste du Royaume-Uni et l’Union Europeenne. Pour plus d’informations, consultez  http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

If you have a story you would like to see published on UK France bikers.com, please contact us here.

Si vous avez une experience a partager et que vous souhaiteriez voir publiee sur UK France bikers.com, n’hesitez pas a nous contacter en cliquant ici.

It appears that a large number of motorcyclists continue to be very unhappy with the RBKC’s parking policy, which includes the provision of 960 spaces in bike bays for resident use only, subject to purchasing and displaying a parking permit. While the RBKC continues to provide free motorcycle parking for visitors, resident bays are constantly empty thus forcing all motorcyclists (residents and visitors) to park their motorbikes and scooters like sardines, in the remaining 1,368 free spaces available in visitor bays. If you’re a visitor to the RBKC, it is now almost impossible to quickly find a space to park close to your destination because residents (and we don’t blame them) refuse to pay for parking in the bays dedicated to them.

We have recently been made aware of an increasing number of defaced residents bike parking bays in Kensington & Chelsea, where the signs painted on the ground to advise motorcyclists of the requirement to purchase a resident parking permit to use those bays are covered in thick black paint, making them useable by everyone free of charge.

We had never seen so many bikes parked in a bay that is normally for residents use only! Below is what a resident bike parking bay normally looks like in the RBKC, i.e. it is completely empty.

We wonder how many letters and emails of complaints the RBKC has received over the past 18 months with regards to their stupid motorcycle parking policy, which makes a substantial amount of kerb space totally unused, due to 960 resident spaces being constantly left empty. This is very poor kerb space management, but like their Tory colleagues in Westminster, the RBKC Councillors also seem to ignore the public and pretend to know better than everyone else. Wouldn’t one think that because motorcyclists use the services on a daily basis, they are therefore better placed to provide some constructive feedback to the Council? We wouldn’t even like to think of how much the RBKC has spent on the purchase and installation of 960 security devices in resident bays, all this for absolutely nothing and being a complete waste of taxpayers’ money.

In the meantime, when you see a defaced bike parking bay in Kensington & Chelsea (as shown on the above photo), you should be able to park your motorcycle in it free of charge (although at your own risk), as no one can be expected to guess who is allowed to park in there when the signs are not entirely and clearly visible. Should you decide to park your bike in a defaced resident bay, you should take a picture of the bay as a proof that it is defaced, in case you need to challenge a potentially invalid PCN.

While UK France Bikers.com does not condone any activity that could be considered as vandalism, we can only assume that the continued “upgrading” of the residents bike parking bays is a clear indication that something is seriously wrong and we would expect the RBKC to thouroughly re-think their motorcycle parking strategy at their earliest opportunity.

It’s always a very bad idea to treat motorcyclists like cash cows, isn’t it?

Please join and support the campaign to stop Westminster Council from stealth taxing motorcyclists to park before their scheme spreads all over the UK and the rest of Europe. For further details, visit http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

Rejoignez le groupe de manifestants contre le stationnement payant des motocyclistes a Westminster avant que cela ne se propage dans le reste du Royaume-Uni et l’Union Europeenne. Pour plus d’informations, consultez  http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

If you have a story you would like to see published on UK France Bikers.com, please contact us here.

Si vous avez une experience a partager et que vous souhaiteriez voir publiee sur UK France Bikers.com, n’hesitez pas a nous contacter en cliquant ici.

The Council has been trying hard to justify the residents’ charge with the installation of ground anchors to increase security, but the take-up of these devices has remained extremely low. The problem is that the vast majority of local residents are reluctant to pay for parking their bike, even in bays equipped with security devices. They therefore park their motorcycle in free bays dedicated to visitors, thus making it very difficult for the same visitors to park while visiting the borough.

The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea (RBKC) have received many complaints about their unpopular motorcycle parking scheme, and despite this, they seem to continue with it, a bit like the Westminster Tory Councillors, who have chosen to ignore thousands of objections to their bike parking tax and are now facing the consequences of their choice.

Anyway, one of our readers has kindly sent us a few pictures of a residents motorcycle parking bay in the RBKC, where the ground painted word “permits” is defaced, thus making the affected bay usable by everyone and, most importantly, free of charge for all.

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We are not surprised to come across a defaced residents motorcycle parking bay in Kensington & Chelsea, given how fed up motorcyclists are with parking in tiny visitor spaces, while some 960 spaces in the residents’ bays are not being used at all. How frustrating is it when a visitor rides around for more than twenty minutes to find a space and sees plenty of unoccupied resident bays and so many over-crowded visitor bays?

Despite the many emails and letters that the RBKC has received from angry bikers over the past months, nothing has been done, so some individuals seem to have decided to take radical action and deface those resident bays to make them available to everyone, free of charge.

It sounds like the RBKC are now having a little taste of what Westminster City Council are currently going through with all their motorcycle parking signs defaced by a large group of protestors, fed up with dealing with a council that doesn’t listen.

We won’t be surprised if, in the near future, we notice that all the resident motorcycle parking bays have been defaced, costing the council thousands of pounds of lost parking revenue and taxpayers’ money. This is what happens when councillors refuse to listen to the people they are paid to serve.

Let’s not forget that, like Westminster City Council, the Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea is a Conservative lead council… that says it all, doesn’t it?

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Please join and support the campaign to stop Westminster Council from stealth taxing motorcyclists to park before their scheme spreads all over the UK and the rest of Europe. For further details, visit http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

Rejoignez le groupe de manifestants contre le stationnement payant des motocyclistes a Westminster avant que cela ne se propage dans le reste du Royaume-Uni et l’Union Europeenne. Pour plus d’informations, consultez http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

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If you have a story you would like to see published on UK France Bikers.com, please contact us here.

Si vous avez une experience a partager et que vous souhaiteriez voir publiee sur UK France Bikers.com, n’hesitez pas a nous contacter en cliquant ici.

The RBKC used to have 1,590 spaces for motorcycles, all free of charge for everyone, whether residents or visitors. They subsequently installed ground anchors on 960 of those spaces and made them available for use to their residents only, subject to purchasing a parking permit. The remaining 630 parking spaces continued to be free of charge and were to be used by visitors. However, residents, who did not wish to pay for parking, were also welcome to use these remaining 630 spaces free of charge.

Over the months, the RBKC created an additional 588 free spaces dedicated to visitors, thus bringing the total number of spaces in the borough to 2,178, of which 960 were for residents only (subject to purchase of a parking permit) and 1,218 for visitors, free of charge.

There would have been no issues if the residents of the RBKC were happy to pay for parking their bike in bays equipped with ground anchors and, as a result, were letting visitors use the remaining 1,218 free spaces.

However, a problem occurred when RBKC residents started to use the 1,218 free spaces to park their bike because they were not happy with being charged for parking in one of the 960 spaces dedicated to them. Because the free visitor parking bays were full of bikes owned by residents who were unwilling to pay for their parking, a large number of visitors could no longer park their machines close to their destination and ended up having to ride around for at least 20 minutes before they were able to find a space to park their bike. And if that space was located within 5 minutes walk to their destination, they were very lucky.

So you see the problem? The 960 resident spaces are almost constantly left unused and the bays where the other 1,218 visitor spaces are, are constantly over-crowded, to the extent that, when you are lucky to find a space to park your bike, it gets damaged by another biker trying to squeeze their motorcycle into a tiny space, or you end up parking miles away and walk back to your destination. The whole situation is getting completely ridiculous.

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Empty motorcycle parking bay for residents only

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Full motorcycle parking bay for visitors, which residents also use

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Not to mention the number of PCNs that must be issued to bikers on a daily basis because they have no choice but park their motorcycle illegally, when they can’t find a space in over-crowded visitor bays.

The RBKC have so far addressed the problem by only creating a symbolic 150 extra free spaces (supposed to be for visitors), but what is actually required is convert the residents parking bays back into visitor ones, so that everyone benefits from 2,328 free spaces in total, and not just 1,368 (1,218 + 150). This is the solution to the problem but when are the RBKC going to understand this, given the increasing number of complaints that they receive from bikers?

Perhaps, the only way to make the RBKC realise that there is a serious issue with motorcycle parking in their borough is by getting thousands of bikers from the No To Bike Parking Tax campaign turning up at their doorstep to demand additional free parking and the scrapping of their highly unpopular residents motorcycle parking scheme?

Westminster City Council have seen thousands of bikers protesting in their streets and at their doorstep for the last 16 months to get their ridiculous motorcycle parking tax scrapped, so a bit of this thrown at the face of the RBKC may wake them up and force them to sort out their motorcycle parking policy.

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Recent bikers demonstration outside Westminster City Council

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Source: Freedom of Information request to the RBKC

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Please join and support the campaign to stop Westminster Council from stealth taxing motorcyclists to park before their scheme spreads all over the UK and the rest of Europe. For further details, visit  http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

Rejoignez le groupe de manifestants contre le stationnement payant des motocyclistes a Westminster avant que cela ne se propage dans le reste du Royaume-Uni et l’Union Europeenne. Pour plus d’informations, consultez  http://www.notobikeparkingtax.com/

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If you have a story you would like to see published on UK France Bikers.com, please contact us here.

Si vous avez une experience a partager et que vous souhaiteriez voir publiee sur UK France Bikers.com, n’hesitez pas a nous contacter en cliquant ici.